“Stoking the star maker machinery behind the popular song”

And so, the massed ranks of the Party hierarchy, featuring an unexpected appearance from the Leader, swept aside virtually all reservations and moved responsibility for Westminster selections from the States to the Federal Party. Given the rumours of widespread opposition, the overwhelming nature of the vote in favour – and if anyone tells you it was close, it really wasn’t – gives the new regime some credit in the bank as the transition takes place.

I’d already outlined my concerns but, at the end of the day, the focus should be on making whatever emerges work.

On a final note, however, whilst a large vat of molasses was poured over English Candidates Committee and other key players in the candidate approval and selection system, the damage to that relationship will take a long time to be repaired, if it ever is. For volunteers are people too, no matter how far up the Party structure they are…

“I was a free man in Paris, I felt unfettered and alive”

I was pleased to be in the Conference hall for the debate on F9: “Free to be Who You Are”, and the vast majority in favour of the motion as amended will, hopefully, put further internal Party debate into abeyance for a while.

I’m the sort of liberal who believes in judging people on the basis of what they’ve done as opposed to what they are, which appears to bring me into conflict with some of my fellow Liberal Democrats, and so whilst I have very little personal “skin” in the game, I wanted to support a motion which was clearly the product of a lot of consultation, and reflected the sort of liberal society I strongly endorse.

The speeches, at least those supporting the motion, were impassioned in the way you might expect from people whose lives and freedoms are in question, but that is surely as it should be. And the fact that they were impassioned did not detract from the force of their arguments.

All in all, much credit should go to Christine Jardine for taking this potentially poisoned chalice and producing something evidently easy for liberals to support.

Oh, and Olly Glover, you may be forty and still single, but the Liberal Democrat matchmaking service may well come calling for you sooner or later…

“There’s always somebody calling you down“

I am, if nothing, sympathetic to the concept of sound public finances. And whilst the numbers don’t need to precisely balanced – debt as a percentage of GDP is a more useful measure than the amount of debt itself – a government clearly has limits placed on it, if only by the markets.

But to see Rachel Reeves balance the books on the backs of the vulnerable is a blow. You expect that sort of behaviour from a Conservative administration, but from a Labour one? No wonder there is disquiet on the Labour backbenches.

It’s a strategy which plays into the narrative of the likes of Reform but won’t persuade many voters that Labour are the party for them.

And now it’s civil servants facing the axe. You’d almost never guess that we’d had a change of government, would you?

* Mark Valladares is the decidedly unwell Monday Day Editor, live from Peterborough station on his way home from Conference.